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Musings about the virtual and the real world

Wormhole Pingpong

And just as soon as I complain and whine about my oh-so-busy life and am feeling sorry for myself (woe is me!) I log in and poke my into our adjacent low security systen and found myself far from high sec in a system choked full with wrecks, a few POS-es, a ton of anoms and a single other player in a Loki Strategic cruiser. Now we had a couple of guys coming online in my corp and I decided to see if I can take a look at the Loki, maybe even take a shot at him.

I am still not used to the whole “local channel” thing – the Loki pilot knew that I came in and promptly left the anomaly he was ratting in. Interestingly, he made a beeline straight to our wormhole and after some milling around, jumped in. I waited outside in the low sec while corp mate Rahvin was standing by in a Hurricane inside our POS shield. We had no clear plan but a Loki is not something I wanted to attack too casually.

But then Skip logged in and with three ships, we had the advantage and decided to go for it. The Loki jumped back into the low sec hole and warped away. Skip and Rahvin got their Drake and Hurricane onto our side of the hole and I jumped home to join them. If the Loki really was hunting us, he may come in to play. I was 30km off our hole when Skip decided to take a peek in the low sec and jumped in, Rahvin follows. I had no voice comms and all I got in fleet channel was a terse “engaging”. I didn’t know what, where and how. Did the Loki bring friends?

I wanted to tell Skip to jump back into our hole, pretending to flee where I can wait in ambush. But its too complicated to explain in text and I just decloaked, fired up the MWD and burned to and through the hole to see the Loki pounding on Skip’s Drake. Rahvin’s ‘cane was engaged as well but it didn’t look good for Skip, so he jumped back into our hole (polarizing himself) and warped away to let his shields regenerate. The Loki jumped after him. I hesitated. If I jumped in now, I cant jump back out. I’d rather wait for the Loki to jump back out – that polarizes him – and then tackle him here in low security space. My Proteus has a rather weird fit. It has 126,000 HP and is designed for one thing only: to grab and hold. It has lousy DPS and I will rely on Rahvin and Skip to deliver the damage. My Proteus also is heavy as hell and aligns more like a battleship than a strategic cruiser.

This is where voice comms failed us. The Loki jumped back into low sec, I was decloaked and grabbed him right away. Scram, web, blasters. He landed pretty much on top of me and I was actually doing some damage to his shields. But he engaged too, launched drones and I saw my shields blow up in 3 three salvos. This was my first time in this ship and I was not sure how much I could take, so I rode up on top of my WH – it is my escape hatch when things go pearshaped. Rahvin now came back out and engaged with his cane. The Loki keept shooting at me, I went into armor but my massive buffer tank made it all look pretty harmless. Only danger is, the Loki was neuting me and eventually kills my web and scram – but did not take the chance to warp away. Instead, he warp scrammed me – kind of useless since I sat on top of my WH home, no amount of scramming could have prevented me from leaving the fight. The Skip came back out and engaged, still with crummy tank. I had hoped he would have just gotten another ship from our POS instead of waiting for his shields but without voice comms, this was impossible to suggest “in the heat of battle”. So, skip took his HAM drake and has to be close – to his demise. The Loki switched fire back to Skip and our Drake went poof just just when our target went into armor. Now we had him. I scrammed, webbed and bumped him, Rahvin had his ‘cane in position and shoots what he is worth but he also took some damage – possible the drones. I targeted the drones and tried to shoot them but to no effect, not hitting anything. So, we just had to suck it up. The Loki tried to outrun me but my Proteus ain’t that slow either and I kept up with him. He went into structure, then blows up in some very pretty explosion. I tried to snatch the Pod but he disappears – I thought he warped away when in fact he had jumped back into our hole. I followed, and saw him jump past me and right out. There is a 1.2bn ISK bounty on him which I wanted and I jump back out just to see him warp his pod off. Damn! He said something like “Epigene: GF” in local and leaves the system. I just wanted to return the “gf” and convo-ed him:

Well, I am still not sure what to make of it – I assume he expected me to just let him join right there? With 1.2bn ISK on his head, I should have likely made a greater effort to get him close to my ship but I don’t scam and if I say I want him in my corp means he flies with our team. So that didn’t go anywhere.

But it was a great fight and with voice comms, we would have not lost the Drake, that teaches me to set up TS finally on my new PC…

Great post. I had a bit of a pitty party myself as you might remember. It’s amazing the bounce back after that post that I’ve experienced. Seems you may have done the same, only your stories of battles are much more exciting than mine with my hisec afk ice mining lol. Great read my friend, and I’m glad you guys came out on top.

Hey Boss, thanks! It was kinda situational. My RL hasn’t changed much, just that I logged in at a time when I knew I can play for a couple of hours… It was very lucky that in those hours, something exciting happened. The best part though that I got to fly fleet with my friends again – I really missed that part. So, when can we have you as part of our temporary fleet?

I hear you. Well, look me up, we are online quite a bit on weekends and try to have 1 or 2 weeknight roams. Numbers are increasing. Last night for example we had about 10guys and we successfully scared the neighbors….